Month: August 2012

Favorites Friday: Light-Hearted Musicals

On By cherylmahoneyIn Favorites Friday14 Comments

Two weeks ago I talked about dramatic, intense, soul-stirring musicals.  Today, let’s talk about the ones that are, well, just fun.  Because sometimes all you really want is a light-hearted story with good songs.

I went through a Singin’ in the Rain phase when I was six or seven.  I don’t remember anymore what I liked about it when I was a kid, just that I made my parents watch it again and again.  I can still quote off large swathes of it.  (Favorite line: “I’m a shimmering, glowing star in the cinema firmament.”  But you have to say it in a Lena-voice.)  It’s so fun, and Gene Kelly is so charming and Donald O’Connor is so funny (he might have been what I liked so much as a kid) and the songs are excellent.  And when Gene Kelly goes dancing through the rain…that’s a great moment.  And I can’t say that the light-hearted musicals don’t have deep emotions sometimes, because he does, right there–it’s just happy emotions.

I feel like I have to include Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers en masse.  It isn’t any one musical with them (though Top Hat is my favorite) and it’s more about the dancing than the singing, but nevertheless, en masse they’re simply wonderful.  Absurd, predictable, and escapism at its absolute best.  I had a Fred and Ginger phase as a kid too, and then when I got my wisdom teeth out, I rewatched all of their movies.  They’re like vanilla ice cream or a bubble bath or whatever you use when life gets tough and you need something to tide you over a bit.

Hello, Dolly is fantastically fun.  I mostly know it through the movie, and even though I know Streisand is too young for the part, I love the flair she brings to it.  I think Dolly could do much better than Horace, but I’ll overlook that.  They pretty much have me at “Put on Your Sunday Clothes,” and did long before WALL-E incorporated the song so brilliantly.  I would be remiss not to mention the presence of a very young Michael Crawford, utterly unrecognizable as the man who will eventually play the Phantom.  But he’s delightful here too, in a totally different role (though there is a bit where something blows up in a basement, and Cornelius Hackl’s big problem is his inability to get a girl…just commenting).  I would love to see a remake, with Streisand reprising the Dolly role (and now the right age) and Crawford as Horace.  I think it would be amazing.

My Fair Lady is another one with an absurd romance (what does she see in him?) but the music…so many good songs.  Even if I don’t see Professor Higgins as a romantic lead, he gets wonderful songs with clever lyrics.  And for a light musical, there are actually quite a few loud and angry songs.  Eliza and Higgins both get some near the end.  Marry Freddy–HAH!

Newsies is the one that’s giving me trouble in my division this time.  It’s also the reason I couldn’t just divide my categories by time.  But it’s tricky emotionally, since it is about dramatic emotions–the underdog fighting the world, the desperate dream for a better life, the working classes standing up, the fight against child labor…but at the same time, it’s so enthusiastic and cheeky and fun that I can’t really put it in the same category as Les Mis or Phantom.  So it’s over here in this list, with all due respect for Cowboy Jack’s yearnings for Santa Fe and the working boys’ fight against the oppressive powers.  I love this one because I just love rally-the-troops songs, and this one has lots.  And I love all that enthusiasm and cheekiness.

That’s funny, after I made the list I realized all of my favorite light-hearted musicals are movies, while the dramatic ones I think of first as plays.  But maybe that makes sense.  The dramatic ones are an event.  The light-hearted ones are a pleasant place to visit again and again, as you can with a movie.

This is a wildly incomplete list, by the way, but I’m trying to keep the length reasonable.  If I was going to make it complete, I’d have to add Fiddler on the Roof, Oklahoma, Guys and Dolls, Mary Poppins, White Christmas, Brigadoon, Camelot, 1776, The Producers, most of Disney (if you’re going to be broad about your definitions of a musical) and…well, that’s a starter, anyway!

Walking Ankh-Morpork with Sam Vimes–Both of Him

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Summer in Discworld2 Comments

I wanted to read some new Discworld books this summer, but I’ve also been meaning to re-read Night Watch.  This was the first proper Discworld book I ever read.  Technically I read Maskerade first, but I read it as a Phantom parody, paid no attention to the larger context, and despite madly loving it, I was somehow not inspired to go on to the rest of the series (can’t quite explain that).

So Night Watch is where it really started for me.  I don’t recommend anyone else start here, as it makes absolutely no sense as a place to begin.  More on that in a bit.

The book focuses almost exclusively on Sam Vimes, who remains my favorite Discworld character.  He’s the head of Ankh-Morpork’s City Guard, and has been instrumental in making them into the force they are today (and weren’t a few books earlier).  While attempting to apprehend a serial killer, Vimes is caught in a freak storm above the Library of Unseen University, where the wizards reside.

Vimes and the killer are thrown thirty years back in time.  Due to complications and wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey technobabble, Vimes ends up taking the place of the copper who taught a young Sam Vimes how to be a copper–so it all becomes rather circular and you can’t think about it too hard (Vimes tries not to).  If mentoring his younger self while keeping an eye out for that killer on the loose isn’t enough, Ankh-Morpork of the past isn’t the comparatively well-ordered place of today.  Corruption is rife, plots are afoot, and a revolution is in the making.  Vimes remembers how it all came out, but there’s no guarantee things can’t change, wiping out his own future.

It’s a slightly complicated plot, but somehow it works right along while you’re actually reading it.  I think that was true the first time I read it too.  I liked it even better on a re-read, because I knew who everyone was.  Part of the fun of the book is seeing recognizable characters when they were much younger.  Nobby Nobs is a street urchin (and as ugly as ever), Cut-Me-Own-Throat Dibbler has yet to acquire his trademark phrase, and Vetinari is still in Assassin School.  None of that means anything without reading other books, which is why it makes no sense to start here (funny how that’s always a topic when discussing Discworld, and so rarely one for any other series!)

I can even argue that you get an extra layer if you read later books first.  The narration keeps referring to Vimes’ younger self as “Young Sam.”  In the present-day portion, Vimes’ wife is very pregnant, and in later books we see that their son is called (wait for it) Young Sam.  So there’s definitely a father theme going on that becomes much clearer when familiar with later books.  Discworld is so sequentially confused.

The best thing about Night Watch is that you get to see Vimes at his Vimesest.  He’s a copper and he’s tough and he’s practical.  He doesn’t seem to believe much in honor, while being very honorable.  He believes in Law and he believes his job is to keep the peace and protect the ordinary man–while having no illusions about the nobility of your typical Ankh-Morporkian.  He’s the kind of man who doesn’t fight a mob or yell them into submission.  He steps out in front of the mob, lights a cigar, asks if they’re having a pleasant night and would they like to step into the Watch House for some cocoa, and if not they really ought to go on home, it’s getting cold.  And it works.

Vimes understands Ankh-Morpork and its people, he knows the streets and he knows the crowds and he can handle all of it.  I love this book because we get to see all of this.  In some of the earlier books, Vimes is still evolving.  Some of the later ones deal more with politics, and the most recent, Snuff, takes him out of Ankh-Morpork (which was a mistake, I think, and though I like the book I’ve just now realized this is why it wasn’t better than it was).

Night Watch is set in a different time so a lot of regulars and recurring characters aren’t in it.  But that’s actually okay, because the result is that we get lots of Vimes instead.

My conclusion is, don’t start here, because significant portions won’t mean anything.  But if you’ve read any City Guard books to give you context and if you like Vimes, this is a particularly magnificent installment in the series.  It’s definitely one of my favorites.

Author’s Site: http://terrypratchettbooks.com/

Other reviews:
Ritual of the Stones
Puss Reboots
Sandstorm Reviews
Anyone else?

Classic Review: Wildwood Dancing

On By cherylmahoneyIn Fantasy, Reviews, Young Adult4 Comments

I reviewed some really good books when I first started this blog.  But most of you weren’t here yet!  Since I’m coming up on a busy month right now, I thought it was a good time to share again some of those early reviews.  Most of you probably haven’t read them before anyway…

Today, here’s the very first review I posted.  This book is largely responsible for my interest in “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” fairy tale, as it’s the one that got me started.  One person who read this review was Juliet Marillier, the author.  I wrote her an email and she sent me a very nice, personalized reply.  I knew she was awesome!

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I plan to cover good and bad books on this blog, but for a first post, I thought I’d start with a favorite.  Wildwood Dancing by Juliet Marillier is a wonderful fairy tale retold–two fairy tales, in fact, artfully combining “The Twelve Dancing Princesses” and “The Frog Prince.”

I love retellings of classic fairy tales.  The original classics tend to have…certain issues, like helpless heroines and not entirely coherent plot lines.  But they usually have some spark that fascinates us–which I imagine is why they became classics to begin with.  For “The Twelve Dancing Princesses,” perhaps it’s the idea that you can escape your ordinary life every full moon to go dancing in a magic land (though the magic land is more or less threatening in different versions).  For “The Frog Prince,” transformation stories, changing what is into something that’s better, have an eternal appeal.

So when you can take that essential spark and reshape a new story around it, one with a vivid and intricate plot, and with an appealing and capable heroine, then you’ve got something really good.

Wildwood Dancing is about Jena and her four sisters.  They live in rural Transylvania, at Piscul Dracului, and for nine years they have been slipping away in the night to dance at the fairy court every full moon.  Jena’s closest companion is Gogu, who’s quite sweet and charming, as well as being an enchanted frog.  Jena and her sisters encounter conflict in both the human and magical world, from mysterious strangers appearing in the Fairy Court, and from an overbearing cousin who seeks to take over Piscul Dracului.

With vivid characters and exciting turns in the plot, this book stays engaging throughout.  And, on the whole, it’s at least as sweet and charming as Gogu.  I can’t say the biggest “twist” of the book surprised me, but that may be me–I’m usually good at guessing twists that I think are supposed to be unexpected.  That’s not always a bad thing though–sometimes when a twist does surprise me, I end up feeling rather like a victim of “bait and switch.”  This book, on the other hand, feels as though everything came out perfectly, gloriously right.  I read the conclusion to the romance twice–and again just now.  It’s that cute.  🙂

Author’s website: http://www.julietmarillier.com/

Saturday Snapshot: Revision

On By cherylmahoneyIn Saturday Snapshot10 Comments

When I’m not blogging, I am knee-deep in revisions of my novel.

I’m not sure I’ve quite captured the vast amount of scrawling going on.  Even though this round actually involves less drastic change!  It’s all a process…

Visit At Home with Books for more Saturday Snapshots!

Discworld on Screen

On By cherylmahoneyIn Summer in Discworld6 Comments

To take a different direction for Summer in Discworld this week, I thought I’d look at the movie adaptations of Discworld books.  Books-to-movie adaptations are always a bit chancy, but on the whole Discworld seems to have fared well.  They’ve all been TV miniseries which allows more screen time, and that usually means a more accurate rendition.  And Terry Pratchett seems to have been heavily involved, which also helps!

I don’t have quite enough to say about any of them for a full review, so let’s do a round-up instead.

The Color of Magic: This is a two-episode miniseries (three hours) that covers The Color of Magic and The Light Fantastic, which makes sense as they’re a continuous story.  As far as I can recall it’s pretty accurate to the books, with some decent effects.  There’s an impressive cast, including Tim Curry, Jeremy Irons and Christopher Lee (as the voice of Death).  The most fun, though, was Sean Astin in a role not too far from his hobbit character.  This is fun, although don’t expect too much, as it is based on two of the weaker Discworld books.

Hogfather: If you need a new Christmas movie, this is excellent in a weird sort of way.  The Hogfather, Discworld’s Santa equivalent, has gone missing, and Death is trying to fill in.  Pretty soon Death’s granddaughter, Susan, who just wants to be normal, gets pulled into the mess.  Meanwhile there this a lunatic who makes assassins nervous, and he’s just a little too interested in the Tooth Fairy…  I particularly love Susan (played by Michelle Dockery, Lady Mary on Downton Abbey) and Marc Warren as Teatime is wonderfully creepy.  Both are excellent portrayals from the book.

Going Postal: This is wonderful, though it does diverge farther from the book than most.  Moist’s character is a little simpler (with a more straight-forward path from jerk to honorable), and some of the funniest bits are left out (including Grout’s trip to the hospital, and most parts involving the wizards).  However, they also play up the romance and Miss Dearheart’s character in a way that I think works very well, and much of the rest of the book is faithfully represented.  Barring the slight simplifying of Moist, the characters are all brought to life well, and even if the Post Office didn’t quite fit my vision of a building stuffed with letters, it got close at times!

There are also two animated miniseries:

Wyrd Sisters: I’ve only seen the first episode of this one, which was enough to convince me that it’s following the book practically line-by-line.  Since I just read the book in the last month, I thought I’d better wait a while before I watch a movie that’s such a close retelling–it’s like rereading something immediately.  Still, that kind of faithfulness is something I generally approve of, so if you want all those great Discworld jokes, you’ll do well here.  Don’t come looking for brilliant animation–it’s decent, not terrible, not approaching Pixar or Disney either.  It looks like a Saturday morning cartoon, but at least the depiction of characters seems to be pretty accurate.

Soul Music:  Similar animation, but also similar faithfulness to the book–and it has Christopher Lee as the voice of Death.  There’s a lot that’s fun here, especially the Death of Rats!  I also enjoy Death and Susan as characters, and they’re the major focus for much of this.  This is earlier chronologically than Hogfather, if you have any interest in watching things in order. 🙂

All of these are available on Netflix, and all but Going Postal are streaming.  If you’re going to just watch one, watch Hogfather or Going Postal, but I think any would be a good time.  And if you watch any live action ones, keep a close eye out for Terry Pratchett in cameos!